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WISER Humanities: Keeping up to date
Judy Reading and Kate Petherbridge
Oxford University Library Services
Keeping up to date
This session will show you ways to make your own current awareness service, using electronic bibliographic resources to keep up with the literature in your field, creating personal research/interest profiles.
You will learn about RSS feeds, email alerts, contents pages services and saved searches.
Keeping up to date – the challenge
Information resources are
increasingly varied...
…and vast
…and solutions…• Tools and services to highlight new publications:
– Journal/Table Of Contents (TOC) alerts • e.g. ZETOC
– Citation alerts from Web of Science– Saving and re-running database searches
• e.g. FirstSearch, CSA Illumina– Mailing lists
• e.g. JiscMail– Newsfeeds, blogs and podcasts
Remember…• The idea is to manage information
– What kind of publication and information is most useful to you?
– How much time will you have to digest and act on the alerts?
– Will a new alert duplicate information you already receive from elsewhere?
– What is the “life expectancy” of your interest in a particular topic?
RSS feeds• RSS Really Simple Syndication• Subscribe to updates from favourite websites and
other e-resources• First you need a “reader” - software that checks RSS
feeds and lets you read new articles that have been added to them
• Free web readers – e.g. Google Reader, Bloglines, My Yahoo!
• RSS is available when you see this logo in a website or database:
Case study 1 - Dr Organization
I need to keep up to date with key journals in management – but I
haven’t got time to keep browsing in the library or
on websites!
Solution – journal alerts e.g. • ZETOC is the British Library’s electronic tables of
contents service• Covers 20,000 journals and 16,000 conference
proceedings a year• You can set up email alerts and RSS feeds for
particular journals, or for keywords or author names
• Available through OxLIP+, Single-Sign On password needed for remote access
Hands-on
• Set up email journal alerts from Zetoc
• Create a RSS reader account with Google Reader
• Set up RSS feeds from Zetoc into your Google Reader
Case Study 2 – Ms All Rounder
My DPhil topic is really interdisciplinary. I need to keep up to date with
several topics, but I don’t want the hassle of
checking databases all the time.
Solution – Database alerting services
• Receive an email when there is new material in your subject area
• RSS or Alerts (sometimes both available)• Some databases use different terms:
– “Alerts”, “Updates”, “SDI” (selective dissemination of information), “Save search”
• You can set up multiple alerts– Tip: name your alerts meaningfully
Types of alerts• Tables of contents of journals and conference proceedings• Journal articles, book chapters, book reviews
– Use databases to receive alerts about new articles relating to specified subjects/authors/other keywords
– Search as usual, then make your search into an alert by clicking “Alert” or by choosing it from your “Search history”
• Receive alerts about new material on broad or narrow subject areas
• Receive alerts whenever a particular article is cited by someone else
SOLO alerts
• You can save searches and set up alerts in SOLO http://solo.ouls.ox.ac.uk
• You need to sign-in using your Oxford SSO then click on the Save query option at the top of the results list of any search
• You can re-run your saved searches from your SOLO e-Shelf and set up alerts
• You can also delete searches and set up email alerts• An RSS feed is generated by any SOLO search and
you don’t need to be logged in.
Click on Sign in and then choose University of Oxford and when prompted enter your University of Oxford Single Sign-On (SSO) user name and password.
For more information on SSO see: www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/sers/resources/ssoathens
Click on Guest e-Shelf or e-Shelf [if logged in] to see your selections.
Citation alerts from Web of Knowledge
• Citation alerts let you know whenever a particular article is cited by someone else
• This can help you keep up to date in several ways:– You can track how important a particular article is– You can find new articles on a similar topic– You can monitor how well received your academics’
work is!
Citation alerts fromWeb of Science, in Web of Knowledge
• To receive alerts if anyone cites a particular article, click on the article title to select full display
• Click on Citation alert• You will be prompted to log-in or to register. You can
set whatever account email and password you like• The default alert is email. To set up RSS feed
instead, right click on the XML icon, choose “Copy shortcut”, open your RSS reader and choose “Add”
Click here to set up citation alert
WOS: Managing My Cited Articles
• To go to “My Cited Articles List”, click on “My Citation Alerts”, at the top of the page
• To view or change the email alert settings, click on “My Citation Alerts” (at the top of every page), and click the "Modify Settings" button. You can cancel particular alerts, or change the format of the emails
• Your RSS reader will automatically report new citing articles. You do not need to renew the alert, and should use your RSS reader to cancel the feed
My citation alerts
Search History in Web of Science
• You can save a search either so you can run it again later or so you can be alerted to new records which match the search when they are entered in the database
• Do a search e.g. “global warming”• Click on “Search History” at the top of the page• Click on “Save History/Create Alert”• “Open Saved History” lets you see your saved histories• You will then see the XML button that you can use to set up the
RSS feed• You can turn the alerting off or delete the search history• Choose “Open” to run the search again
Search history
Save History / Create alert
Name your saved search
If you click on the XML/RSS icon you will see the RSS feed url which can be copied into your RSS reader
Cambridge Scientific Abstracts • Choice of:
– RSS ; email alerts ; Save search histories• Need to register for search history and alert functions• Search as usual, then choose “Alert me” on the
results screen (towards top)• New screen opens: log in• Choose delivery method
– Note “Feature Summary” tips• Click “Save”• To delete alerts, go to “Manage Searches & Alerts”
Firstsearch• FirstSearch does not offer alerts - however, you can
save and re-run searches manually in FirstSearch to find new publications related to your search terms
• Use “My Account” to set up a FirstSearch account• Perform a search, then click “Save Search” (bottom
right)• To re-run your saved search, click on “Previous
Searches” on the FirstSearch home page, and enter your account username and password
• Re-run saved searches from your list by clicking “Select Terms” and “Search/Combine”
• Or combine two previous searches using AND/OR/NOT
Save searchPrevious searches
Previous Searches Type search terms and/or choose an
operator to combine selected previous searches in the current database and click on Search/Combine. Note: Click on a previous results count to
retrieve previous results. Note: Click on a database name to redo a
saved search on that database.
OxLIP+
• You can save searches and set up alerts in OxLIP+ for cross-searchable databases
• You need to login using your Oxford SSO• After running a search in one or several cross-
searchable databases choose My Research and History
• Click on the bell to add an alert or click on search name to re-run search.
Case Study 3 – Professor Asset
I need to keep up to date with the academic
community in the field of economics – things move
so fast!
Solution
• Mailing lists, feeds, blogs & podcasts
Mailing lists
• Mailing lists, e.g. from publishers, special interest groups
– www.jiscmail.ac.uk for hundreds of scholarly mailing lists
– Look at the web-sites of key organisations in your subject area
RSS feeds
RSS feeds from webpages wherever you see the icon, e.g.
– http://www.intute.ac.uk/rss.html
– http://www.ox.ac.uk/
– http://www.thes.co.uk/rss/– http://www.bbc.co.uk/feedfactory/
Blogs
• Blogs - online diaries: subscribe to RSS feeds
• Intute http://www.intute.ac.uk
– Browse or search for your subject, then “Filter by” Blogs
Intute www.intute.ac.uk
Podcasts
• Podcasts – news feeds with audio or video files
- eg http://itunes.ox.ac.uk/
Oxford Podcasts in iTunes U
Finding feeds, blogs and podcasts
• Search engines– http://blogsearch.google.com/– Technorati http://technorati.com
- Ask.com
SummaryKeep up to date • To avoid information overload• To avoid missing important information• Using databases, blogs and mailing lists for e-mail alerts and RSS
feeds
Need subject specific advice? Ask your subject consultant http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/collections/librarians
Presenters also happy to help – contact [email protected] or [email protected]
